Im trying to get the most out of £1500 for a friend. He mainly plays EvE and COD4. Hed also like it as silent as possible (within budget). This is what I have so far:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3GHz Retail Boxed Processor (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130483) - £159.99
Seems to be the top one before the price jump - will this be a bottleneck? Any benefit or Quad core at lower clock speeds?
Cooler: Akasa AK-925 Revo, Dual Fluid ThermoDynamic Cooler (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/134777) - £41.13
Silent and effective
CASE: NZXT Hush Black Silent Case (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129993) - £61.09
Silent and good looking for a reasonable price tag
RAM: OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/138561) - £70.72
Amazing value, 2x2Gb to leave room for expansion.
HDD: Two Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII Hard Drives (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130454) - £117.36
To go in a RAID 0 array for the OS - storage will be external where needed
GFX: Two Nvidia 8800GTX 768MB GDDR3 Dual DVI PCI-E Graphics Cards (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130449) - £559.99
Lowest price 8800GTXs I could find. Any reason I should try and save £ to get more costly brands?
MB: UPDATEDAsus STRIKER EXTREME 680I Motherboard (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126240) - £171.79
Pretty costy but seems to be one of the top performing SLI boards - Cheers to Walrus for the pointer
Optical: Optiarc AD-7200S DVD±RW/DL/RAM Internal SATA Bare Black Drive (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139414) - £15.44
Cheap and Chearful - any such thing as a silend DVD drive?
PSU: ZM750-HP Dual Heatpipe Cooled 750W Modular PSU (http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/powersupplies/zmx00-hp) - £99.99
Quiet and hopefully sufficient
Monitor: Acer AL2416WB 24" TFT Monitor Widescreen 1920x1200 (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130842) - £200.05
Cheapest 24" monitor. Can 1920x1200 do full 1080 HD - can never remember
PhysX: BFG Ageia PhysX Accelerator Retail box (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/110706) - £94.55
Hed like a PhysX card - it is really worth it of will the real life gain by better spend elsewhere - CPU/GPU? Do any game actually support this?
Total: £1499.74
Any comments appriciated. He would like it to be watercooled too but imo its too costly.
EDIT: Also apologies for it not being priced on Tekheads - I was doing it there but the lack of 8800GTXs < £280 shifted me over.
Youll not be able to do SLi on that motherboard.
Doh! Thats was a pretty major obmission! Ive changed the MB and PSU (to stay within price).
got a better idea...
get an xbox 360, ps3 & wii & a cheaper PC :-D
I would drop the physics card and put the money towards a better monitor.
That acer monitor does not even have DVI and its a little ugly
Quote from: sexytwPhysX: BFG Ageia PhysX Accelerator Retail box - £94.55
Hed like a PhysX card - it is really worth it of will the real life gain by better spend elsewhere - CPU/GPU? Do any game actually support this?
Interesting option but no idea of any games that do support it. Have a look for reviews.
[edit]Had a quick look. There doesnt look like there are any killer games for this.[/edit]
Monitor Samsung 226BW Reviewed as the best 22" on the market at the moment.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/125099
At the very least dont go for some cheap brand. It makes a big difference.
Dont bother with a Physix card. I personally think they will prove redundant even before games developers start taking advantage of them. Properly using multi-core processors will achieve teh same goal.
Some games do/will support physX, but not many.
UT3
DN Forever
To name two.
Dont get a sh*t TFT dude.
Oh, and a £171 board is pointless if the person youre buying for dont know how to use it and its gonna be plugged in and left alone for more than 6 months.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/125082
As is extra spent on decent memory.
Dont bother getting a PhysX card:
http://kotaku.com/352495/nvidia-buying-ageia-for-bouncy-physx-tech
Itll probably be included in a driver update, letting you do physics on one of your GPUs.